Statement on the incident on January 20, 2025, cooperation transparency and anti-Semitic graffiti at TUM

For some time now, the group “University and Academics for Palestine Munich” has been calling on the TUM university management to hold a “Conversation regarding international collaborations”. This was to take place on January 20, 2025 at 6 p.m. in lecture hall 0506.Z1.670. In addition to the university management, the student councils and interested members of the public were also invited. These invitations were sent by e-mail, among other things. Accordingly, TUM was aware of the date and time. However, the event was never authorized by TUM.

At the request of TUM, the event was terminated by the police around the time it began. Trespassing charges were filed against all those present (approx. 30 people). The police carried out personal searches and took the personal details of all those involved. In connection with this, all those present were held by the police in the lecture hall until all personal details were finally established. This took about 2-3 hours. During this time, the lecture hall could only be left for toilet visits and under police escort. After the eviction, there was a spontaneous rally in front of the TUM's north campus.

The exact course of events on the day itself is neither complete nor definitively comprehensible for the Fachschaftenrat (TUM wide student council), but we would like to take a stand here on the points that are clear to us:

We do not associate ourselves with the content and demands of the group beyond the basic desire for more transparency. Irrespective of the group's political opinions and views, however, we would like to address a few aspects.

We criticize the university management's approach of pressing charges against participants for trespassing. We do this in the full knowledge that TUM has the right to break up events on its premises that it has not authorized and to enforce its domiciliary rights. However, it is also possible for the police to enforce domiciliary rights without pressing charges for trespassing. Due to the peaceful course of the eviction and the event itself, we consider these optional charges to be disproportionate.

We also once again support the fundamental concern to create more transparency at TUM with regard to its cooperation partners. In doing so, we are building on a resolution passed at the 367th meeting of the Fachschaftenrat. There must be an accessible, central overview of cooperations between chairs, schools or the TUM as an entire organization with other universities, institutions, companies or other organizations and individuals. By being as transparent as possible, TUM can make a positive contribution to the discourse on the role of science in society and the economy.

At this point, we would also like to take a stand against the partially anti-Semitic and threatening graffiti on TUM buildings. We condemn anti-Semitism, as we do any form of political extremism. Furthermore, vandalism is not a legitimate form of opinion expression and anti-Semitism is not a tolerable opinion. In this statement, we also comment on the graffiti, as there is a close temporal connection between the event and its discovery. However, it should be made clear that we do not attribute this to either the organizers or the participants of the event and would like to distinguish between the action in the lecture hall and the vandalism. Should there be any overlaps here, these are to be determined by the judiciary and are irrelevant to the nature of our statement.

As already announced in our Instagram post of January 26, 2025, we would like to point out once again that - in our experience - no one should expect to be exmatriculated or lose their job at TUM for merely participating in the event.

The Fachschaftenrat